267 comments:

Are they putting the turkeys through a giant grinder? Whole?! Are they still alive? I'm really confused. I guess it says something that I'd rather watch turkeys being slaughtered than Sarah Palin talking.

This is relatively humane; compare this to the fate of Daniel Pearl.I suppose many in this country simply dont think about the rather nasty activities involved in converting living animals, fowl and fish to the food that magically shows up in our grocery stores. Perhaps if they did, there might be more vegetarians!

I was expecting blood and guts flying across the screen, Sarah chasing the hapless birds around the pen wearing a hockey mask and wielding a chain saw. But it didn't happen. The video is mildly amusing but no big deal.

How many of the recent presidential contenders do you think have ever killed, dressed, cooked, and eaten their own foodies?

If Palin moved to Texas she could be our governor in five years following in the footsteps of the great Sam Houston as the only person ever to be govenor of two states and in 2020 she could storm the White House!

"It's a helicopter, and it's coming this way. ...No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers... I can't tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, Johnny, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!"

The slaughterhouse backdrop makes the pardon that much more real. A pardon doesn't mean much if we wish away the alternative.

For the normal politician, the turkey pardon is make-believe, a comic cliche of high-mindedness. Unlike the literal pardon -- one turkey lives and the rest go down -- the symbolic pardon rescues every turkey -- even the one in Grandmas' freezer.

Oh, please...it was reported on many of the cable news shows with plenty of video.

And it wasn't the killing of the turkeys you morons...it was the heads being whacked off right behind her, with the trough filling up with more and more blood...while the idiot was being interviewed on camera.

If people here think that's some kind of really shrewd political move...you're even dumber than I thought you were...and that takes some doing.

I would prefer to believe that farmers pull shrinkwrapped turkeys from the ground thank you.

You know... despite my candy ass, what struck me about the video was not the gruesomeness I was supposed to feel, but why the shot was framed to include this in the background. Clearly the news cameraman is a vegan Huffy blogger.

Can't wait to see this clip in an attack ad in 2012. Slaughtering turkeys is fine...but giving an interview right in front of it shows her total carelessness and lack of political savvy. It's just dumb. Who gives an interview while big dumb birds are being killed behind you? That's lameness.

But, but! We Huffsters buy only organic turkeys from Whole Foods! They are flown to a mountain monastery in the Himalayas where the prajñā pāramitā is chanted to them by Jain monks until their skandhas achieve release from saṃsāra and their bodies fall peacefully to the onyx floor. Only RETHUGLICAN REDNECKS eat MURDERED TURKEYS!!

I don't share the outrage as I eat meat primarily, outside of corn and peas I don't touch vegetables. So animal slaughter is required and greatly appreciated.

But I think the Professor misses the point. They were showing you a dumb turkey among other dumb turkeys. Only we ain't done slaughtering the one with lipstick yet. Hehehehehehe.

Palin really does deliver. A gift that not only keeps on giving, but may destroy her own party even further (read Parker's column). We love you Sarah! And we love ridiculing you even more. And stop palling around with turkeys, you idiot.

"Only we ain't done slaughtering the one with lipstick yet. Hehehehehehe.

Your turkey, the one who got elected, seems to be the self-slaughtering kind. He's going to be carved up and served with gravy by the media and the disappointed far left before he even gets inaugurated.

the laughter, dear heart, is not at the turkey killihng. Shit. We all kill animals and devour them. What we are laughing at, and that which you missed, is the slaughter going on while she was in her own inarticulate way delivering a goodie goodie message. The background screwed up what she was trying to do and that made her look very very dumb.Now if you know about body language you can also understand context in staging. She (Palin) clearly does not.

as for the cute mockery about Huff site: the imbecile who thinks ghe is clever with the dark meat nonsense ought to learn that in any blind test, dark meat always beats out white meat in poultry tasting.

Now I am an effete liberal but I have killed my own poultry. Have you, wise ones?

There are a couple of vegetarians in my family who always bring their own "Tofurkey" on Thanksgiving. If they saw the Palin video, their heads would probably explode. I guess they are "candy asses" too.

Modern Americans are quite easily distracted. An ADD electorate, unable to concentrate. How do they get any work done, their attention yanked this way and that, requiring proper staging for interviews lest real life intervene and they miss the message?

Nathan, yes, ye shall be spoon fed your news during the Obamafest. Don't you worry about all that backgound stuff. "pay no attention to the man...." etc etc.

as for the cute mockery about Huff site: the imbecile who thinks ghe is clever with the dark meat nonsense ought to learn that in any blind test, dark meat always beats out white meat in poultry tasting.

How was my comment about dark meat mockery of the Huffington Post? WTF? How is this "nonsense," you idiot? Dark meat is greasy and flavorless, and I'm skeptical of blind people taking tests.

There are a couple of vegetarians in my family who always bring their own "Tofurkey" on Thanksgiving. If they saw the Palin video, their heads would probably explode. I guess they are "candy asses" too.

Why yes, yes they are, if they apparently can't even handle the fact that other people like to eat meat.

Remember this from last year?Whether the turkeys come from a shelter or the White House, they don’t live very long. Most adopted turkeys are commercially bred broad-breasted whites, genetically disposed to grow to a marketable size in about four months. Even on a diet of only a couple of cups of turkey feed a day, they become obese. They usually develop leg problems, congestive heart failure and arthritis.

“One just couldn’t get up, so I had to have her euthanized,” Ms. Lane said. “Another one just dropped dead one evening.”

"If Palin moved to Texas she could be our governor in five years following in the footsteps of the great Sam Houston as the only person ever to be govenor of two states…"

As I recall, Houston only served as Gov. of Tennessee for a few days before going back to live with the Indians though. He was a strange character but was one of my heroes as a boy. He opposed Texas's secession too and escaped the fate of some who did (lynching) due to his great prestige.

I'm assuming that those big cones hold the carcass in place while the blood drains out. But where do they chop the head off? It looked like the one going in had no head.

Probably. When I was a kid the local turkey farm up the street just cut the turkeys under the tongue and put them in the cones to bleed out, creating big puddles of blood in the snow. Quite the scene, really. I thought shoveling turkey shit was the better job.

You mean, neither was stupid enough to ever do real work. I would guess most folks have never been through a turkey farm before Thanksgiving, shoveled turkey shit, or discovered why calling someone a turkey really is an insult.

I wonder what the reaction would be if it were Hillary in the interview

Hillary's career has been all about meat. Wasn't one of her big clients at Rose Law Group a big chicken-slaughtering syndicate? And how do you think cattle futures get so valuable? They don't take those cows out on kiddie rides.

If anyone is seriously interested in the actual technique involved (I used to slaughter several hundred chickens at a time), what you are seeing is live turkeys being put in a cone that holds their wings from flapping. The bottom of the cone is open so their head can extend through, and the person doing the killing cuts the large artery on the side of their neck, then lets them bleed out. If their wings could flap they'd scatter blood all over (I know from experience). The head is not completely severed for the simple reason that an open windpipe allows dirty water to be sucked into the lungs during the "scalding" process (which loosens the feathers for plucking.) F

So what was Palin supposed to do? Say "oh, wait, let's move away from the background of the turkey processing, I would hate for people to see how turkeys go from gobble to table."

You know what would have happened had she done that? The HuffPo and rest of the Palinphobes would have screamed that she was staging the interview to keep people from seeing the brutality of turkey processing.

I'm sure Gov. Palin has done far worse to a moose than that farmer did to those turkeys (not that you could actually really see what he was doing -- as I was watching, my assumption was that he was snapping the necks of the previously live turkeys...one of them seemed too jumpy to be dead).

Personally, I'm more approving of the words coming out of her mouth than I am appalled by the scenery.

The HuffPo folks are idiots. What's the big deal about this turkey killing? Are we supposed to eat turkeys live? I killed my first chicken a long time ago by wringing its neck and cutting its throat (when I got squeamish) at the wringing.

Was Palin supposed to tell the cameraman (likely a Dem) to take a tight shot or was she supposed to pardon the turkey? Well, she pardoned the turkey, now all the snide Palin-haters are making asinine comments as if there is something wrong with Palin being filmed at the scene of a turkey slaughter.

BTW, does anyone want a movie of a three dogs hanging from a line, slaughtered, and skinned? What about a slab of doggy ribs next to a side of mutton on a butcher's block? What about puppies in a cage waiting for someone to buy them so they can face the knife? That's the norm in this part of the world

What a joke. These people have descended into a realm where analysis and self-criticism are completely extinct.

These are almost all meat eating, bloodthirsty carnivores) poo-pooing at someone standing in front of their dinner being prepared. There isn't even an word for this level of bourgeois hypocrisy. I suspect future civilizations will adopt the world "American" for oblivious irony the way "Greek" is used for ironic tragedy.

Does anyone know any statistics for Alaska's turkey exports? It would be great to calculate the likelihood that these people are actually eating the very same turkeys that they're harrumphing Palin for standing near.

I know there must be some connection between Palin and the turkey slaughter and the way the very blue state of Massachusetts has apparently been reduced to a state of terror by a plague of wild turkies. Comment?

I don't get why this is such a big deal, beyond the fact that the guy killing the turkeys reminds me of those people who stand outside the Today Show window hoping to get on television. (Aside: do they do that any more? I haven't watched Today in years.) It also says something about the director whose boneheaded decision it was to show that in the background rather than choosing another angle. S/he was either clueless about the photography aspect or wanted to make Palin look stupid. Either way, I doubt she cares. The woman actually (gasp!) knows where meat comes from.

I know there must be some connection between Palin and the turkey slaughter and the way the very blue state of Massachusetts has apparently been reduced to a state of terror by a plague of wild turkies. Comment?

The best part is at about 1:14 minutes in the video, when the reporter asks about government programs being on the chopping block!!!!

Titus said:The turkeys are given a mild sedative as Enya plays in the background and gently go to sleep.

Funny!!! But if they're listening to Enya, why would they need the sedative? Enya should be enough to sedate ANYTHING! Why, I've seen reports of whole villages going into a persistent vegetative state after listening to the first side of "Shepard Moon"....

After that he takes it to the meat market and they make deer steaks, hamburger, venison, barbecue and even beef jerkey.

If it has a big enough rack he cuts the head off has it stuffed and puts in his wild game room with all the other heads of animals. When I was young I used to put my peepee in their mouths. For some reason when they taxidermist is done with them he has their mouths open and their tongue hanging out. It was too tempting for me not to feel what it was like to get a bj from a stuffed deer head so I put the peter in it. I also french kissed the rainbow trout that my father has mounted on a wooden outline of the state of Wisconsin.

"I suppose many in this country simply dont think about the rather nasty activities involved in converting living animals, fowl and fish to the food that magically shows up in our grocery stores. Perhaps if they did, there might be more vegetarians!"

Not more vegetarians - more pragmatic, realistic meat eaters that would bring much needed sense and sensibility.

As we speak, the ratio of cluless, squealing wusses to realistic, sensible folk is rising.

I watched this on TV last night (because I am unhappy), and David Schuster reported that Palin was asked point blank if she wanted to do the interview in front of the slaughtering, and she in fact said "No worries," so it's not as if she was oblivious. She knew exactly what she was doing, which either makes her more of a complete whack job or more of a total bad ass.

1) Weak-minded people who can't deal with reality get aghast at actually seeing animal slaughter.

2) Palin let herself be pictured with animal slaughter in the background.

3) Therefore, Palin is an idiot, for failing to carefully tailor her image to avoid upsetting the weak-minded who can't deal with reality.

Well, okay, yes, if your definition of a good politician is someone who goes to every effort to avoid confronting the weak-minded with reality, Plain isn't a good politician. And you should certainly vote Democrat, because their policies similarly have no intersection with reality.

Ah, and AlphalLiberal comes along to give us our explicit dose of classist scorn. Sometimes you have to wonder if he's a deliberate parody, with his handle so perfectly suited to the elitism of his comments.

If you don't field dress (gut the animal) immediately the core temperature of the animal will remain high. You want the body temperature to begin dropping to keep the meat from going bad.

Plus if you accidentally shoot the animal in the torso there tends to be a mess inside of the animal (icky fluids etc)which should be cleaned up immediately.

If you are just a quick drive away from your home or are one of those despicable, lazy, unsporting "road hunters" you might get away with not field dressing. However, if you are camped in the wilderness and many many miles from home or the nearest town where there is a cold storage place to hang your kill you will field dress in the woods and you certainly don't want a pile of guts laying around to attract predators to your campsite.

You also don't want to keep your deer hanging, literally, around your campsite either. We usually went hunting for a week or more and took our deer or elk to the nearest town which was about 50 miles from the camp and then returned to help the rest of the guys and gals get their tag filled.

More info than you really wanted to know I'm sure. Next, how to clean and pluck Canadian Geese.

At my group therapy session at the Sf Zen Spiritual Center, we had an amazing breakthrough on our Palin-obsession and hatred. At the end of my article on it....

"No more guilt and shame when I say that I would like to take that %$#%$%ing Sarah Palin and film her getting tortured and raped by brothers from Harlem, as one Progressive recently suggested. And then, before kicking her ass myself with my hobnailed boots until she screams for mercy, as Madonna suggested to thousands of hooting fans , I will burn her trailer-trash family alive before her eyes just before finishing her off by making her drink muriatic acid and letting the last words she ever hears be, "It's all your fault Ms. Hottie... plus I hate those glasses!"

Okay, people. Those are "killing cones," and the one for chicken are proportionally smaller.

You drop the bird in head first and slit the throat. The bird doesn't know that. Once it loses consciousness the nervous system sets it to flapping and kicking, so the main purpose of the cone is restraint.

If you don't bleed out the bird while it's alive the meat's lousy.

The real beauty of a small operation like that one is its transparency. You can see how the birds are raised -- well -- and you can see how they're killed. This is not some big industrial operation with mechanical evisceration that spreads salmonella all over kingdom-come.

BTW, the next step in an operation such as the one filmed is a short bath in very hot water. That loosens the feathers. Then the bird is placed between two drums of rotating cylinders well-endowed with rubber fingers, each of which has several slits. This plucks the bird more or less clean.

After that it is gutted, head and feet are removed, it is washed out with a hose and then chilled in ice water.

The only Alaska residents who might be offended by such a scene ... almost certainly were not born there.

Poo, by any other name remains verboten from the moment you gotta go to when it returns to unrecognizable soil, and there are good, hygenic, reasons for that. We do our dumping away from where we do the rest of our living, even at our most primitive.

Killing our food is/has been inherently a social/group activity. The hunters return and everyone cheers. The carcasses are prepared and the food is cooked and consumed together.

A *feast* is inherently social. It is, in fact, the whole point of having a holiday center around the feast. We work together and we eat together and we give thanks together.

Well, you picked the right time of year because it's deer season! All you need is a license and a gun. And probably a deer camp.

My dad, brother and sister in law along with many coworkers will be off shooting this weekend. Then there will be lots of tasty deer sausage to eat for the rest of the year. Although personally I prefer Duck to Deer.

Everytime these candy butt liberals put down Sarah Palin, she just gets stronger and stronger. Can't wait until shes President. Maybe then she'll put a few liberals through the meat grinder. Good riddance.

The first officially sanctioned thanksgiving was proclaimed by President Lincoln during the depths of the civil war for the final Thursday in November 1963. The tradition of pardoning the White House Turkey was also initiated by President Lincoln during the next year’s celebration. It seems that the turkey that year resembled Joshua Speed who was President Lincoln’s long term companion during his years as circuit riding lawyer. Speed an art teacher and perfume developer often shared young Mr. Lincoln’s bed as they traveled the back roads of Illinois where Lincoln would try cases and Speed would try to peddle his nostrums while entertaining the depressed Mr. Lincoln with his rants against the poor quality of art and wine to be found in those roadside taverns. The chubby thighs and endearing wattle so much resembled the rotund raconteur that President Lincoln freed the pouty lipped poultry in the name of his good friend. (Pardon Me? The History of Presidential Pardons, Doris Kearns Goodwin Simon & Schuster 2007)

The tradition of pardoning the White House turkey did not become an automatic ritual as many of Presidents did not have a sentimental attachment to their meat. However some of them were more kind hearted than others. US Grant who led the Union army in some of the most sanguinary battles in the history of the United States actually hated the sight of blood or the infliction of pain. So the night before Thanksgiving, Sam Grant sat up all night getting drunk with the turkey so it wouldn’t feel anything when the fateful moment arrived. The ingestion of bourbon by the doomed fowl left its meat with a delicious taste that became all the rage in sophisticated circles after it was introduced on the menu in Delmonico’s restaurant later that same year.(Pardon Me? The History of Presidential Pardons, Doris Kearns Goodwin Simon & Schuster 2007)

Great video, entertaining responses! It was bizarre watching Palin giving an interview with a turkey killing operation going on in the background, but to me it just showed she's not about staginess. The woman is for real. The juxtiposition was terrifik!

The most ineffectual attempt at pardoning the White House turkey occurred during the administration of Jimmy Carter. Even though he famously termed himself a “peanut farmer”, President Carter could not face up to the realities of life on a working farm. So he went to the turkey pen where all the turkeys were held to ask them to pray with him. Although he could only pardon one of them he felt the rest could go to their fate with the solace of prayer to speed them along in their journey. Unfortunately when he entered the turkey pen the birds saw their chance and surrounded the fearful commander in chief and pecked and terrorized him. President Carter did not know what to do. The irate turkeys held the embattled chief executive hostage for 444 hours until the end of the holidaySeason and the change in administrations in January. Then President Elect Ronald Reagan had them all made into turkey burgers.(Pardon Me? The History of Presidential Pardons, Doris Kearns Goodwin Simon & Schuster 2007)

A turkey attacked me once. My parents were trying to get me to pose with it for a photo. I knew it didn't like me, but they insisted. It slapped my arm with its wing and then chased me around for a while. It felt like being slapped by a human hand, only with more surface area. My arm is fine now, but some scars never heal.

Some say revenge is a dish best served cold, but I prefer a hot Thanksgiving turkey dinner to a cold turkey sandwich. But both are delicious.

Sarah Palin is a distraction. The flying turkey bits in the background are a distraction. Why are we talking about distractions when the American people care about things like why Obama hasn't fixed the economy yet and why his absence on the national stage has allowed the financial crisis to continue?

The reaction to Gov. Palin's making of Thanksgiving turkey has confirmed my long-held belief that vegetarians have more in common with hunters than with your average meat eater: hunters and veggies alike understand where their food comes from.

Another nutty Palin interview, but I guess we can just laugh at them now that she won't actually be VP. Yeah, people should know where their meat comes from, but in this particular video - as a backdrop to the interview - it's kinda whacko. (Oh, and she still sounds like a phoney even though she's not being handled by McCain's people anymore.)

What bugs me more as an animal lover is her sick and barbaric enthusiasm for aerial wolf culling in Alaska. No laughing matter on that issue at all.

My thoughts turn to either take out Friday Fish Fry or Friday Fish Fry at a Wisconsin Supper Club.

Deep fried haddock or walleye or perch. American Fries slathered with butter. Really good rolls. Fried cheese curds. Salad bar with thick french dressing. Breadsticks with yummy cheese spread. Baked Beans. Maybe corn fritters. Or the unthinkable french fried lobster. Where else can you get lobster french fried but Wisconsin? Cottage cheese. And finally a brandy alexander or grasshopper-yum.

I cannot find any of those items together here and it sucks big time.

Sometimes you really can't take the Wisconsin out of the big city girl.

Do you understand the wolf killing thing, Oaf? Or is it just the description "shooting wolves from aircraft" that is so horrible?

It's a cull.

Now, we could argue if the cull is necessary or not. I think most biologists and wildlife experts agree that wildlife sometimes needs to be *managed*. What that means is that, because the balance of things is off, or is expected to get off, that waiting for nature to do HER job either won't work, or would be cruel, so people step in and do away with predators or somehow protect the threatened wildlife,(fences around nesting grounds, stuff like that).

The wolves can be killed... or people could wait until an over population of wolves and an under population of wolf-food, means that the wolves die of starvation and related disease epidemics.

So... the decision is made to kill wolves. For better or worse.

Is the *method* really relevant? A wolf shot from aircraft isn't killed any more cruelly than one killed by someone on foot or ground transportation. It's no more cruel at all. It's just... efficient?

Would it be better, more moral, more acceptable, if people tromped through the forest and snuck up on them? Or would it just be more work?

Essen Haus has eliminated their all-you-can-eat Friday fish fry. It's very unWisconsin of them. All-you-can-eat is a tradition. Even if you don't get a second helping, it's comforting to know you could.

Synova, I think it's you who needs to read up on the aerial wolf culling Palin pushes. I already did so and posted links and so forth in another thread around here. I don't feel like re-googling it, but the most interesting articles were on Salon.com and Slate.com. There's also a disturbing video on YouTube showing what these culls are like.

It is a far more cruel way to kill wolves. Shooting from the air causes the wolves to get shot in parts of their bodies that will make them suffer slow and painful deaths, because hunters in airplanes and helicopters are not as accurate in their aiming.

The scientific community does not agree with Palin's policy. To the contrary, they are saying this is another example where Palin doesn't care about having a scientific basis for her policies. For example, 172 scientists wrote a letter urging to her to stop it. The U.S. Congress already condemned aerial wolf hunting decades ago by legislating against it, but a governor of a state is allowed to license it. Palin is more gung-ho about it than anyone ever.

Palin was unhappy that not enough wolves were being killed, so she offered to paw $150 for every hacked-off wolf paw someone brought in. The courts intervened to stop this.

The reason Palin supports wolf culling is to try and keep the moose population up for moose hunters. I saw quotes from the scientific community suggesting the wolf culling is actually bad for both the moose and the wolves - so not just uneccesary, but harmful to nature.

I remember when the blogger Prof. Bainbridge said he could not support Mitt Romney after hearing about how Romney treats his family dog. I extend this to the canines in the wild Palin has caused to be cruelly culled. Wolves are actually even smarter than our family dogs. Palin's policy makes me sick.

Nichevo: I care about the treatment of all animals, but I am a speciesist and I do think that the mmore intelligent animals deserve special consideration. For example, I'm not one of these PETA people who thinks going fishing is as bad as abusing and killing a chimpanzee. But this does not mean I approve of the stupider animals being needlessly tortured (say, the way the chicken industry treats chickens).

I do not call for a vegetaran society. I call for greater respect for animals.

And if you're a governor calling for the mass slaughter of wolves from aerial hunters, you better have a sound scientific basis for why such a cruel culling is required, which Palin does not. The wolves in Alaska have done fine for ages without this whack-job of a governor sticking her nose and barbaric policies in.

What I miss about Wisconsin is the Brat Fest and a nice glass or four of Spotted Cow from the New Glarus Brewing Company.

Easy to drink four Spotted Cows it's so damned smooth. Organic Revolution is also really good. I was wondering why I felt so loosy goosy after a six pack, when I checked it was 6.20% by volume. Cheers!